So its critical that these elements are well thought-out and defined. Define your objectives, measures, and projects. this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan. A strategic plan has to be actionable and easy to understand so your team can execute it and use it as a daily reference, says Devesh Dwivedi, a Senior Business Advisor with BDCs Advisory Services, who specializes in counselling businesses on strategic planning. Create your strategy map or graphic strategic model. Without a strategy, your organization is walking blindly with no clear, aligned goals in sight. Using a framework such as Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Theory of Change (TOC), or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is critical to your strategic success. Unfortunately, the strategic planning process isnt as straightforward as it seems, especially for large companies. They help you prepare to create the strategic plan. Its a filter.. Lets get one thing straight right now: If your organization has turned to you (or your department, a colleague, etc.) Monthly meetings typically include department heads and subject matter experts. Youll get a purpose statement, change agenda, and strategy map template with measures and initiatives. While you might be able to track your first strategy meeting in Excel or give your first presentation via PowerPoint, youll quickly realize you need some kind of software to track the continuous gathering of data, update your projects, and keep your leadership team on the same page. A great way to be sure your leadership team has a firm grasp on your strategy is to ensure they each have a copy of this document, and they can describe the strategy easily to someone who wasnt involved in the creation process. Now that youve created your strategic vision Chapter 3: Put Your Strategic Plan Into Practice. Weve defined each of these concepts more thoroughly below with a few business strategy examples: Whether or not youre using a Balanced Scorecard as your strategy framework, youll benefit from using a graphic model to represent your strategic plan. is a visual tool designed to clearly communicate a strategic plan. Now that youve prepared for your strategy You may have researched risk assessments, core competencies, scenario planning, or industry scans as part of your strategic planning. Sometimes it is helpful to use the SWOT analysis framework to organize your interview questions for your qualitative data gathering. You now have all the background information necessary to create your strategic plan! We believe in empowering teams to do amazing work, consistently & passionately. However, the same team that conducted the above analysis also noted that, for strategic planning to work, it requires some specific ingredients, including formal analysis of the internal and external environment, consideration of several strategic options, and careful consideration around whom to involve during the different steps of the strategic planning process. your long-term goals and how youll achieve them), well be placing a lot of emphasis on the smaller steps (i.e. Having helped hundreds of organizationsfor-profit, nonprofit, and local governments includednavigate through the strategic planning and implementation process, weve seen firsthand the many challenges that arise along the way. Strategic planning is the art of saying no more than the art of saying yes, Dwivedi says. And our team of strategy implementation experts is always available to provide guidance on every aspect of execution, from setting up an efficient management process to using our reporting tools optimally. Download it below! Not only does OKR strive to measure whether objectives are successful, but also how successful they are. The function of the Strategic Plan is to provide a strategy and action items for the Quality Assessment Performance Improvement Plan (QAPIP) at Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network. Copyright 2022 Ascendant Strategy Management Group LLC d/b/a ClearPoint Strategy |. If metrics are off-track, for example, what can be done to get back on course. Strategic plans typically include four elements. Those who use the BSC do so to bring their strategy to life, communicate it across their organization, and track their strategy progress and performance. That means theres no time wasted analyzing irrelevant and extensive data points in strategic meetings; instead, everyone stays focused on what is most important or where improvements need to be made. Since the launch of NorthWEstern WILL, individuals, departments, units, schools, and the Catalyst Workgroup have concentrated resources and energy to achieve goals outlined in the strategic plan. Who are your rivals? Dont worry, though, yours can be one of the success stories.) Its important because employees need to understand what they are responsible for and why its important to the overall success of the organization. Because it fosters healthy organizational practices that drive better outcomes. Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan. You can use your OAS or Strategic Shift exercises to help you define your priorities and objectivesbut more importantly, you need a way to manage these elements. Avoid squandering time and energy on excessive analysis by making sure the right people are focusing on the right data and actions: Leadership should focus on organization-wide goals and progress. What is strategic planning and why is it important? Report on strategy progress via the quarterly or monthly review meetings you scheduled early in the process. Timely, valid, and actionable information is especially valuable in situations where organizations need to react quickly, so they can make the best decisions possible for all their stakeholders. companies are failing to strategize at all. (As we noted at the beginning of this guide, organizations that actually meet their strategic objectives are in the minority. To make strategy execution work, reporting is unavoidable. Chapter 4: The Benefits Of Strategic Planning (& Challenges You Should Be Aware Of). Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its direction and long-term goals, creating specific plans to achieve them, implementing those plans, and evaluating the results. Months or years later, strategic leaders are left wondering why the company never achieved what was intended. This team isnt responsible for doing everything in your strategy, but it should oversee strategy execution across the organization. Over time, the areas that contribute less directly to strategic goals will become clear, and you can work on gradually aligning everything you fund. Dont do it again. This is also a good time to think about your strategy review meetings, which are a necessity for staying on track over the long haul. In Chapter 3, we discussed structuring the budget around the key components of your strategy. A Custom Scorecard created to present the performance of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Departments Strategic Plan. This primarily means developing a cascading process to engage and inform stakeholders including providers, employees, persons served, family, advocates, the community and the general public in our quality improvement activity. While many people use a strategy map (shown in the example below), you could also use icons or a color-coding system to visually understand how the elements of your strategy work together. There is a danger of analysis paralysis.. The plan shouldnt be academic or stuck in theory. But even if your budget only extends through the fiscal year, consider how youll align your strategy to projects in the future. This is a tiring processso be careful to tailor everything in this section to what those in your organization will tolerate. /[  E Step 2: Gather the inputs to your Strategic Plan. 2-page, full-color overview of Chitimacha Tribe of Louisianas 2018-2022 Strategic Plan. Did you recently do a SWOT analysis and create new vision and mission statements? Step 1: Gather your team, set up meetings, and create a timeline. `$( a0$(.=* (P+qr7Wh9[h#C Modify them or use a strategy evaluation framework to make sure theyre focused and move on. Reasonable is the key word here, as that depends on your organizations maturity level with regard to strategic planning. Strategic analysis of the internal and external environments this may include: Current organizational structure, vision and mission statements and value chain, A PESTEL analysis chart identifying external or macro factors affecting the business (PESTEL is an acronym for political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal), Porters Five Forces (tool for analyzing the competition), A BCG Growth Share Matrix (chart devised by Boston Consulting Group to illustrate each strategic business area according to growth rate and market share). This pyramid can be visualized in countless different ways, the order of the pyramid isnt whats important. For actionable tips, check out this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan across your organization. Typically, the OSM lives in the finance departmentor it could be its own separate division that reports directly to the CEO. With the right plan in place, tools to support it, and committed leadership, every organization has a good chance of seeing their strategy come to life. Step 1: Confirm your mission and vision statements. NCQA will help us be one of the leading community mental health agencies in the country. A simple example is the initiative to transition to digital sign-in before appointments to reduce patient wait time and improve patient satisfaction. The current state section is about 15 to 20 pages in length and includes: An appendix may be added at the end with extra information, such as: The next section describes the desired future state of the company. Deploy strategy reporting software (if you havent already). 2. A great example of a this theory of change is the nonprofit RARE. Create reports to highlight your results. When Dwivedi works with his clients, he normally ends the strategic planning process by writing a one- or two-page executive summary. During your search for strategic planning tools, youve almost certainly come across a Strategy Pyramid (shown below). (If you use strategy software, the strategic plan document will likely be contained there.) If you havent created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so. Dont reinvent the wheeluse our assortment of strategic planning templates to get your strategy up and running more easily. What are they doing? This exercise offers a helpful way to think about and organize your internal and external data. (Youre already a step ahead of your competitors simply by taking the time to research the problem!) 3669 0 obj <> endobj %PDF-1.6 % This will generate the atmosphere you need for everyone to start reporting honestly and working together to achieve the organizations goals. Measures are metrics used to measure if youre meeting your goal. 3. But many businesses go through a time-consuming and costly strategic planning exercise, only to find themselves with a plan that is ignored or just glanced at once a year. Do you already manage with a robust set of KPIs? Its a filter. Chapter 1: Prepare For Strategic Planning. You then need to look at the threat of substitutes. If you have a goal to improve patient satisfaction, a measure might be average patient wait time. Why is strategic planning so effective? So while this whole process is focused on your overall strategy (i.e. For future resource allocation, link your operations (what some refer to as the work planning process) to your strategy. The participation and dialogue that takes place among managers and employees throughout the strategic planning process improves transparency and engagement on everyones part. Together we will improve the quality of our system of care one inch at a time. This section is typically around 10 to 15 pages long and is based on workshops and interviews that Dwivedi holds with key employees. Heres how objectives, measures, and projects interact: You have a high-level goal in mindyour objective. Teams should focus on the individual projects and daily tasks that are helping to accomplish those goals (and the data that goes with them). Think through how it will be shared, and which parts of it are relevant to outside parties. The initial planning activities usually unfold over the space of several months, but strategy execution itself is an ongoing process. Senior Business Advisor, BDC Advisory Services. Throughout the process, the entrepreneur and their team work closely with the consultant. Here are two additional helpful pieces of content as you move forward: Youve probably seen reference to the Plan, Do, Check, Act framework before. Instead, your strategy review meetings should be meticulously organized and accompanied by an agenda. You need to have buy-in across your organization, and so you need leadership involvement from the beginning. Use them. And while it may be tempting to use all your available metrics, charts, and graphs for every business decision, doing so unnecessarily can be a detriment to the decision-making process. That means the majority of organizations are floundering when it comes to crafting and executing their strategy. What actions need to be taken to continue making progress? Strategic planning is how we make it happen. What is your organization trying to accomplish? ExternalYou also need to be sure you have a plan for communicating your strategy outside the organizationwith board members, partners, or customers (particularly if your organization is municipal or nonprofit). Dwivedi holds a series of strategic planning workshops and interviews with the CEO and key employees to brainstorm ideas on how to achieve the companys goals. You should be shouting it from the rooftops to keep it top-of-mind across your organization. Do you currently create reports for your board and management team? When that shared vision is communicated clearly and consistently, it inspires employees to take ownership over their role in the plan, and they are typically more motivated to do their best work. %%EOF 2-page, full-color overview of North Slope Borough School Districts 2015-2020 Strategic Plan. Its important to understand strategy vs. tactics. This free Balanced Scorecard template will help you become the strategy superhero your company needs. The Balanced Scorecard, developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, has been one of the worlds top strategy management frameworks since its introduction in the early 1990s. Your meetings should revolve around three key issues: Encourage candid dialogue and make sure the discussion stays focused. )YnPe@U`o 0 #Pi@*W] A)t```y&- $:;,[;~13&1bxe. But in todays business environment, thats not a feasible option. If you want to learn more about the major areas of responsibility you should be covering in your strategy management processand how strategy software can help with thattake a look at our ClearPoint tour. Its a time-honored strategy execution framework built around the competition in your industry. Your measures answer the question, How will I know that were meeting our goal? From there, initiatives, or projects, are put in place to answer the question, What actions are we taking to accomplish our goals?. Once youve gathered up the quantitative data from the sources above, youll also want to get feedback from a number of different sources: Combined, all of this data will help you get a better grasp on the future of the business. Thats not an effective plan. In the short termwhich would be your next budgeting cycle or something similarwork to structure the budget around the key components of your strategy. However, try to avoid adding yet another meeting onto everyones plates; instead, there may be a current meeting you can replace or redesign to make time for strategy discussion.

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